Yes, Scarlett Could Have Gotten Rhett Back
by LL
Summary: For now this is just a snippet-an exercise, to see how well I can duplicate Margaret Mitchell's tone and style. If Scarlett ever got Rhett back, THIS is how she would have done it.
1. Chapter 1

_A quick catch-up. Eventually needs to be expanded into chapters:_

_(Scarlett goes to Tara and spends about six weeks. Rather than kill Mammy off Alexandra Ripley should have let her live a while longer! Borrowing plot devices MM used right at the end of GWTW is just lazy and stale._

_Mammy knows something happened because Rhett's not there and Scarlett doesn't know where he is or when he's coming back and she's trying to pretend otherwise. Mammy senses something is wrong, and just talks about how bullhaided Miss Scarlett always was. "Miss Scarlett, you is bullhaided, child. Whutever you wants, you gits. Now you gots yourself into somethin' you cain't fix."_

_Eventually Scarlett needs to tend to the store and comes back to Atlanta. She should check on Ashley anyway; the only good part about putting that off was if she disappeared to Tara for six weeks and nobody in town knew when or if she was ever coming back, they certainly couldn't talk about her and Ashley. _

_Scarlett goes to call on Ashley and Beau and runs into Mrs. Elsing and Fanny Elsing Wellburn coming out. Fanny has taken over supper and is coming out with an empty pie plate wrapped in a pink flowered dishtowel. They show Scarlett a good sneer on their way out. So much for scotching any__gossip; now tongues will be wagging again._

_Scarlett goes over again and finds that same dishtowel there, among the donated meals and food from friends and neighbors. The next time she goes over, she spots Fanny going in before she gets close to the house. In her mourning dress, but she's taken the mourning veil off of her bonnet.)_

Ashley and Fanny Elsing Wellburn!

What could Fanny be thinking? Melanie was hardly cold in the grave, and here she was every other day, bringing food over alone. Maybe Ashley was too grief-stricken right now to notice, but if anyone could tell when a woman had set her cap for a man, it was Scarlett. Why, in no time at all, Fanny would be waltzing over here in colors instead of mourning, and Scarlett had blazed the trail for her!

Who knew when Ashley would forget Melanie enough to even think of courting Fanny—to even think of courting anyone—but when he did, the whole town would be charmed at the very idea. Here was Ashley, a grieving widower with a motherless little boy, and Fanny alone with two girls, no thanks to that trollop Scarlett. They'd known each other since they were children. Ashley Wilkes and the lovely blonde widow Wellburn! How perfect! And Mrs. Elsing clearly was already in favor of it. Perhaps she had even pushed Fanny at Ashley.

Scarlett wouldn't put it past her. She didn't think Fanny would be over here throwing herself at Ashley of her own accord.

Mulling it over in her mind, even Scarlett had to admit it would be a good match.

But for Ashley, Scarlett had never, ever lost a man she wanted to someone else. Even Rhett still wore her wedding ring, for all the time he had spent at Belle Watling's saloon. Even now, Ashley could still be hers.

The idea of giving Ashley up. finally and forever, to Fanny Elsing, opened up a cold space in her heart.

She had no idea how to get Rhett back, for all her pacing the floor at night over it. He could file divorce papers and she might have to let him. And the thought of rattling around that big house all alone, like a pebble in a bucket—oh, it was almost enough to make her reconsider about Ashley.

It wasn't too late.

Of course marrying her would ruin Ashley's reputation and he'd have to know it, and for that reason he would probably never do it, but—

Oh, those passionate, stolen kisses! And Scarlett remembered that lovely afternoon at the lumber office the day of Ashley's birthday party, before they'd been discovered by India and Archie-and Mrs. Elsing herself.

Those times had been good. She'd finally started to understand Ashley, and to feel that he understood her. She still felt that kinship and fondness for Ashley; that would never go away. And she could, she _could_ still love him, except … except …

Except he wasn't Rhett.

Several years ago, she'd bought Ashley and Melanie a set of Shakespeare as a Christmas gift. She'd popped over a week later to say Happy New Year and found them reading from it aloud to each other. Melanie had hurried to the door and smothered Scarlett in a hug, her eyes shining with gratitude.

"Scarlett, we can't thank you enough for your present this year. It's simply the best gift, darling, we're enjoying it so! Isn't this lovely? Listen!" Melanie had a book open next to her while she was stirring a pot of potatoes, reading lines to Ashley in the living room, lines that Scarlett could scarcely comprehend. She had to think hard after every line Melanie read to even figure out what it meant and before she knew it, Melanie was halfway down the page and Scarlett hadn't made sense of word one. _Oliver Twist_, this was not.

She'd changed the subject with some bit of juicy gossip, and good thing, too. If she'd had to listen to that all afternoon, she'd have been so bored she could scream.

And she'd felt downright provincial listening to them. As if Ashley, who'd been on a Grand Tour of Europe, after all, and bookish little Melanie flew together far above Scarlett's head somehow, speaking only to each other in a rarefied tongue Scarlett was too common to know.

Well, she didn't want to know! How the Wilkeses could make sense of such twaddle was beyond her. For a moment, she'd felt as ignorant as if she were Emmie Slattery walking into the house.

Worse, Ashley hadn't needed the book, sitting there in the living room, in order to recite his lines in the play back to Melanie as she read hers. _He'd had them memorized_.

God's nightgown, was _this_ all they did every night? No wonder Ashley hadn't been able to keep his hands or his lips to himself.

Scarlett thought back to her own evenings with Rhett. When they were first married, Rhett had something up his sleeve every night. He taught her men's gambling card games and laughed when she beat him—which it took all her wits to do, and she couldn't but once or twice. He took her shopping, dining, buggy riding, to parties and dancing. Their honeymoon in New Orleans had been the best of all. Oh, and his jokes, the exasperating things he did, tickling her until she almost humiliated herself laughing, and then feeding her and brushing her hair.

Scarlett tried to imagine Ashley doing all those things. If she had to spend every night with Ashley, she knew they'd never happen. She knew she'd be cross. Every time he opened his book, she'd yell at him, and …

Why, it would be just like living with Frank all over again. And she had made Frank miserable, and he had made her miserable. Now she really imagined it, night after night, Scarlett wanting to play cards, to dance and dance, wanting Ashley's eyes only on her … and Ashley in an easy chair in front of the fire with a poetry book.

It was all so disconcerting. On her one hand, the moments of passion, their stolen golden moments of love and friendship, and on the other … the steady dreary drip, drip, drip of Ashley's bookishness and her impatience. All those golden things would disappear in a year, run together like raindrops on a windowpane, snuffing the fire out, washing them all into the ground, inexorably out of their lives until they had nothing but coldness and cross words.

Gerald had seen it all when she was sixteen. _T'would be with grave misgivings I'd say yes_ echoed in her ears.

Ashley had told her the same thing that day at Twelve Oaks. Rhett had said it since she'd known him. They had all tried to stop her and she would not listen.

If she and Ashley could have only the times they had found those moments, those rare golden moments together, Scarlett could have lost Rhett and it would have been all right.

But life wasn't all golden moments. She knew that now, after years of running herself ragged, to the store and the lumber mills. After illness and death and heartbreak.

Life was all the time, never just a kiss and a wish, a golden gossamer dream blowing away in the wind.

And she had held happiness right in her two grasping hands. She could have been radiantly happy all the years of her marriage to Rhett. Now she not only saw the truth, she knew the truth, deep in her bones. Now when all those years were gone and it was too, too late.

Ashley and Fanny might have a chance to be happy. As for herself—

Rhett was the only one for her. Providence itself had matched them, that day at Twelve Oaks. If Rhett never came back, she would rattle around that big house alone all the rest of her life, and she knew she would mourn him forever. She _must_ get him back.

Oh, but how? She must follow him to Charleston and—

But even as she experienced that thought, a coldness came over her and she knew it would be wrong. Rhett would not be happy to see her. He would push her away, he would be angry she'd come. That would never do.

_How can I make him happy to see me?_ Her thoughts ran wild. _What could I do that would change his mind?_

Every way she knew to get a man—pretty dresses and high spirits and dancing and flirting, cologne and her sparkling diamond earbobs, wearing her hair just so—none of that would help her anymore. She didn't know why, but she knew it to be true. And just why that was, when she knew herself mistress of everything her mother and her mammy had taught her about how to get a man, escaped her.

The problem controlled her mind, everywhere she went. Settling accounts at the store, in line at the bank, washing her long hair and drying it by the fire—her thoughts went round and round. How could it possibly be that everything she knew about how to catch a man, none of it, none of it was any use now?

The problem kept her awake at nights, long past the hour she should have been asleep. She took to staying abed late in the mornings, drinking coffee all day long, stumbling around on exhausted feet, her mind a blur.

One night, after she'd finally drifted off long after midnight, she bolted awake in bed. The full moon through the window illuminated the clock on her dressing table just enough for her to see: three a.m.

But for the first time in weeks, her heart pounded and her head cleared. She shook with excitement, for she had the answer.

_Whut you wants, you gits._ Mammy had said it, and Mammy had been right. But what she had meant! Scarlett heard it in the air over the ticking of the clock: _Doan matter whut nobody else want._

Since when had she ever tried to make Rhett do anything and accomplished it successfully while staying in his good graces?

Never. Rhett hated being bossed, he hated being pushed to do anything, and more than anything, he wanted to be treated fair. She thought back to when she had hired Ashley at the mill Rhett loaned her the money to buy, when Rhett had expressly forbidden that money to have anything to do with Ashley. How unpleasant that had been!

And now she wanted to run after him to Charleston. Absolutely that would never do, and now she saw why it would never do.

Anything Rhett decided to do, it had to be his own idea. Other than locking him out of her bedroom, she had never cornered him into anything, because she couldn't. No one could humble Rhett Butler, or break him; he was as proud as Lucifer, as proud as she was.

He had to want to come back to her, and she couldn't make him. Every time she attempted it, she'd drive him further and further away. Any attempt to force him was poison. She certainly couldn't follow him to Charleston; that would be the worst thing she could do. She couldn't be seen to try to force Rhett to do anything at all.

Hurriedly she fumbled for the matches on her bedside table and lit the lamp. She unscrewed her inkwell and grabbed her pen and a sheet of paper and wrote: _Mustn't go to Charleston._

She thought a little more and continued:

_Mustn't __force__myself__ on Rhett._

But she couldn't just give him what he wanted, either. Not if she ever had any hope of seeing him set foot in this house again. She chewed the end of her pen, and wrote:

_Mustn't give him a divorce._

_Mustn't be seen in the company of any other man, __especially__ Ashley._

She thought a few moments more, and wrote:

_Mustn't be seen to be drinking._

She looked at her list, and she knew in her very heart that every word was true.

_Name of God,_ she thought. _All these things I can't do. But what is there that I can do?_

She drew a line across the page, and below it, wracking her brain, she wrote the one word she was able to come up with.

_Pray. _

And then she looked at it. Pray to Whom?

What kind of God would let Bonnie break her neck when she fell, after all she and Rhett had been through? What kind of God would take Melanie after all she had been through? A good God would have brought Melanie along, helping her through that second baby she had always wanted.

Scarlett chewed the end of her pen, anger heaving her bosom.

But then …

If God had done _that,_ Melanie would never have died and she, Scarlett, would never have seen the real Ashley, never have finally understood that she loved Rhett at all.

Did God really take Melanie just to teach her a lesson? After all these years, Scarlett had been afraid of just that—been terrified of it, the night Frank was buried—and now, now, God had finally smote her and punished her. Punished Ashley, too, for their wicked sins.

She ran a shaking hand through her bushy hair, pushing it off her sweat-slicked forehead.

But she and Ashley were still here. It was Melanie who was gone, Melanie and the daughter she had longed for. Dr. Meade had said it was a girl.

Oh, how awful! Why would God do that to _Melanie,_ just to get to Scarlett?

Sudden flash of insight: Because she, Scarlett, was so very obtuse she simply wouldn't learn any other way.

Scarlett went back up to her list of Mustn'ts and wrote: _Must never, __ever__ be so __stupid__ again._

But what a cruel thing for God to do. Why be so cruel to Melanie, who had never deserved it?

Of course, that was what she, Scarlett, had done all Melanie's life, but Scarlett was just a woman and God was …

Well, God was God.

Or was He? Scarlett thought back over the misery and devastation of the war, all those months they had nearly starved, with only yams to eat. It didn't make sense. Of course, people started wars and people fought them, and people decided whether to burn other people's houses and whether to take all their food and let them starve, but … if God was all powerful, didn't He do anything in all of that? Why didn't he stop any of that? Why would a good God let the Yankees rape and plunder?

The thought made Scarlett's head hurt. How Carreen could join a convent and spend the rest of her life in prayer to such a God, she didn't know, but, for herself, Scarlett felt a sudden, dizzying stab of doubt that made her put her pen down and both hands on the bed to steady herself.

Perhaps there wasn't even a God at all.

She imagined what Ellen would say if she dared even breathe such an idea and her head throbbed like the clanging of a bell. Oh, she couldn't think about that now, at all!

But, without her own volition, her pen moved back to the word, _Pray_, and she crossed it out.

She thought of Bonnie and she dipped her pen and crossed the word out again. She thought of Melanie and her pen went back over the word, over and over until she couldn't see the four letters she'd written there, scribbling with such pressure she almost broke the tip.

She sat staring at what she'd written. All these things she couldn't do and not a one that she could. Surely she could do something, she'd always been able to do _something._ And yet she couldn't think of a thing.

She went back below the word she'd blacked out, and she wrote another word:

_Hope._

Certainly there was more she could do than that. There simply had to be. She, Scarlett, had always been able to do more than that.

She'd think about it, everywhere she went. Over breakfast in the morning, settling accounts at the store, alone in her bed every night, just as she had tonight, she would think and think until she had the answer.


	2. Chapter 2

_I know I'll think of it. I know I'll find it._ Never, ever had Scarlett O'Hara met an obstacle or a man she couldn't break.

Through the lonely days and nights, when the thought of never seeing Rhett again overtook her, bringing tears to her eyes and that terrible pain to her breast, when she lay awake longing for sleep, for that one glass of brandy she knew would bring sleep, telling herself over and over, _He'll never come back if I'm drinking, he'll never come back if I'm drinking,_ she always returned to this, to the one thought that saved her:

_I know I'll think of it. I know I'll find it. I know the answer, I do. I just haven't thought of it yet._

Weeks went by, and then suddenly she shot up in bed again in the night, in the middle of a rainstorm. Thunder cracked and lightning flashed outside her window, and she understood that had woken her up.

She lit the lamp and reached again for the sheet of paper, that ledger of her life she studied in vain every night.

_Hope. _

What else could she do? There had to be something else she could do.

And then her mouth fell open, for she realized that there was.

She lifted her pen, and added one more word.

_Apologize._

She could apologize. _Really_ apologize, for something she had never before thought to apologize for.

She got up and sat at her writing desk and reached for a fresh sheet of paper. She sat staring at it. She'd have to send it care of Rhett's attorney in Charleston. If she sent it to his mother, Rhett might never read it, but coming from his attorney, he'd have to. Especially if she started the letter like this:

_Rhett, _

_If you want to divorce me, go on and do it but at least know this: I don't blame you for Bonnie's death._

There. There it was. The only thing she had any right left to say. She didn't mean it about the divorce, and he'd know that soon enough if he tried to file. For right now, those were the right words: The words that would keep him reading.

More rose up inside her unbidden and she it out:

_Every child needs to learn how to ride and every child falls off a horse now and then. I know I did when my Pa taught me. Bonnie would have fallen off sometime and it was just a sad unfortunate thing that she was hurt so very badly when it happened. You were always the right one to teach her. I loved my mother but she could barely sit a horse so of course it was Pa who taught me to ride. He was an excellent horseman just as you are, you ride much better than I do, so of course it should have been you to teach her. Had she lived she would indeed have been an excellent horsewoman and she would have had you to thank._

She envisioned Rhett in front of her the afternoon Bonnie died, his pallid face, his shaking hands, that frightening hollow look in his eyes. Her pen trembled and her writing faltered on the page, the words flowing faster than she could catch up to them.

_I also want to say Rhett that you were a wonderful father to her. Our daughter was a vibrant, smart, beautiful, happy little girl and that was all because of you. I only said those terrible things to you because I was hurt and I wanted to hurt you. I never thought of how torn up you were and that was so wrong of me._

Tears ran down her face and dropped to the paper with little pats like the rain on her windowpane, and Scarlett let them fall.

_I shall always remember you as the best father to our little girl. _

And then she began to cry in earnest. She had to turn away from the desk lest her tears completely spoil the letter.

Sobs wracked her shoulders. How could she ever forgive herself for what she had said then? How could Rhett ever forgive her? Even that didn't matter anymore. All that mattered was how much she wanted to hold him in her arms and kiss away his own tears.

And the time for that was long past. Scarlett held herself, rocking back and forth, and she wept for all the horrible words neither of them could ever take back.

As the sun came up outside her window, she picked up her pen again to write one more thing.

_Love, _

_Scarlett._

She considered whether to copy the letter over again. In the end, she decided to leave the tear splotches and her imperfect grammar as they were. If he saw her tears on the page and he remained unmoved, so be it.

It took her weeks to discover where to send it. She had no idea who Rhett's attorney in Charleston would be, and neither did Uncle Henry. At last she wrote Rhett's mother, praying she'd answer, and when one finally came she rushed to the post office, her heart in her throat. She kissed the envelope before she handed the letter over the counter.

And then she waited. Weeks, weeks of torturous waiting. Was Rhett abroad? Did he even get her letter? Oh, terrible thought—surely he wouldn't have thrown it away without reading it all.

Or perhaps he simply no longer cared. He had said as much when he left, and maybe that extended so far as anything she might write.

Finally, five weeks later she had a letter from Charleston, with Rhett's own inimitable hand on the envelope. Fear gripped her when she saw it: What would he say?

She wanted to open it and yet she could not. If it were something horrible, something that would hurt her, she did not think she could bear it.

If only Melanie were here, Scarlett could have long since poured the whole story out to her. Melanie would never have told anyone. Melanie would have pondered and schemed with her to get Rhett back to Atlanta; and she would have held Scarlett's hand while she opened this. If it were the worst, most hurtful things possible Rhett could say, Melanie would never have let her read them alone.

After a dinner Scarlett couldn't eat, she took a drink of brandy alone in her room and slit the envelope open. She had to know; even if it were the worst, she couldn't put it off forever.

_Dear Scarlett,_

_Thank you very much for your kind letter. Unfortunately, however, you were indeed correct in everything you said when Bonnie died._

_I was much too lenient with Bonnie, and not nearly concerned enough for her safety. You and I both knew as she rode to take that fence that morning that something was dreadfully wrong. If I had taken proper precautions, she would have stopped that pony the instant I told her to—because she would have known I'd paddle her little backside if she didn't. _

_I could never paddle Bonnie, even to save her neck, and the child knew it, and that's why we lost her._

_I appreciate your sentiments, but the fact was that I did fail Bonnie as a father, in the most important way, and that was why she died. You knew it and I knew it, and when you spoke as you did, you only spoke the truth. And I never apologized to you. _

_I know precious Bonnie was your favorite child, and now she's gone, and the fault for that does lie squarely at my door. _

_I'm sorry, Scarlett._

_-Rhett._


	3. Chapter 3

Joy seized her and Scarlett wrote and wrote. _Oh, Rhett, I'm so glad you wrote me back! I've missed you so! Surely you know I love you, darling. You're the only one for me, no one else,_ and, _You know I'm the only one for you, Rhett, you do, surely you do!_ She did not look up until two in the morning, when the pages blurred in her vision, she was so tired.

_Why, I haven't even thought about a glass of brandy tonight. _She shut her eyes, willing the lines she'd scribbled to stop dancing in front of them, and picking up the pages she saw that she had filled twelve of them, front and back. As she leafed through them, phrases stood out in duplicate. _I've been repeating myself and I didn't even realize it. This won't do._

Then she saw it: Passionate, overheated lines like Charlie used to write her from base camp. The last time she had talked like that, Rhett had told her _I don't give a damn_ and he had left. She couldn't risk _that_ again. She turned the pages back and forth. _Great balls of fire. I'm babbling like Prissy._

_Something_ she had done had won her this prize from her husband: He hadn't sent her a thick packet of meticulously hand-copied divorce papers, he had written her back, so he _was_ speaking to her—after a fashion, at least—and he had actually apologized to her for something he'd done. Well—he had when he left Atlanta, too, but not in the same way.

What had she done that got that out of him? And how could she do it again?

She had apologized, yes, but she couldn't apologize after his letter. Riding lessons for Bonnie had never been her idea. Oh, if only Rhett were standing right in front of her! She knew what she'd tell him: _Oh, but Rhett! Everybody spoiled Bonnie._

And then her mouth dropped open, for that was it. That was just the thing! Scarlett tore up twelve madly scrawled sheets and started over.

No one could help spoiling Bonnie, not even Mammy. It was all a terrible accident, a horrible freak thing that would never have happened just that way any other day or hour. Who knew why God had had it in for them so. _Or-good heavens, Rhett, after all we've done?_ _Perhaps he did. But how cruel of him to punish Bonnie for our sins. How, how cruel._

She sat back and realized this was the right letter. She sounded like Rhett had just before he walked out … talking so listlessly and with such regret about Melanie, about how sadly Rhett and she had misunderstood one another, about all things long gone. She hadn't been able to comprehend that tone then … but she knew that regret now.

If she could write the way he talked, it would draw him back to her whether he wanted it or not. _As if you've grown a woman's heart,_ jibed a memory. He might not care that she had, but he certainly would wonder what had come over her.

Dully she pressed her forehead to the cool table. Maybe curiosity would bring him back to Atlanta. It didn't seem that anything else would.

Her letter was short, so she wrote a bit about goings-on in town, said she hoped he was well, and signed it, again, Love, Scarlett.

The letter was brilliant. Brilliant! But she knew she mustn't mail it right away. She'd wait two weeks if she had to tie her own hands.

If only he were in town, though! If she could only say these things in person, those were the words that would work. The right look in her eyes, the right dress, the right hairstyle, the right tone of voice—oh, none of that would ever leap across the miles in a letter. How, how to draw him back to Atlanta?

He didn't even have to tell her he was in town. All she had to do was run into him, and then—

But there was no way for that to happen.

_Unless._

Suppose Rhett stood to lose a great deal of money if he didn't come back? Where _was_ Rhett's money, anyway? Did he keep it all in banks, or did he invest some of it in business ventures someplace? How she wished she'd asked more about his money when she could have instead of babbling on about her own ventures. If he had invested his money anyplace, surely some of it was here, and if some of it was here—

Why, someone could double-cross Rhett as easily as she used to do her competitors in the lumber business, back in the days when she struggled to build up clientele for the mills, and if that happened, and if enough money were at stake, well—! That would suit Scarlett's purposes perfectly.

But how to find where he kept his money? He hadn't taken many possessions with him when he left. Scarlett thought back to that tear-stained day when she'd walked in on him as he packed. She hadn't seen anything disappear into his trunks but linen shirts, fine trousers, and cravats.

_Mary, Mother of God! Why didn't I think to sack his bedroom before this? _Who cared if he'd left it locked; she had a hairpin and a mind that was made up.


End file.
